India: Mumbai> Neral> Matheran- Hill Station

Lynne on the train
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Mumbai's description in the guide book sounded to be big, busy and not very interesting so we planned to move on as quickly as possible. Lynne found Matheran which sounded like a great place for a gentle and relaxed introduction to India.

We got up early to catch a train to Neral. It was our first experience of using the trains in India and it proved quite straight forward. It was a very long walk to the end of the train where 1st class was. The train left and arrived on schedule. We arrived in Neral where we had to change to a toy rain. The entire carriage tipped when Lynne climbed aboard with her bag. It was quite a pleasant ride but there was no A/C and the train moved so slowly up the hill there was no breeze. It was a long 3 hour journey but the train had only started running again the previous week after 2 years non operation.

Matheran turned out to be very nice. A large irregular wooded plateau with high cliffs dropping of on all sides. The train station was full of porters looking for work. A tiny little woman offered to carry my bag that was bigger than she was. We found a place for lunch and had an assortment of excellent kebabs. the paneer Tikka was especially good. Stuart K and I sat and had a drink while Lynne and Kathryn went looking for digs. They found a nice place with a huge clean room and a large monkey filled garden. The monkeys turned out to be less cute than they looked.